There was an immediate scramble to read the small print in the expectation that there would be a sting in the tail. But there was nothing of the sort. Just a penny off beer duty.
So what does this mean for pubs and brewers? Well, from midnight last Sunday, beer became 1p a pint cheaper than it was last week, and this week it is around 6p a pint cheaper than it would otherwise have been.
And over the course of the next 12 months, it will actually fall in price in real terms behind the rate of inflation (notwithstanding any increases imposed by brewers as a result of higher input prices and by wholesalers and tied-pub landlords as a result of their own pressures and motives).
It is politically essential that pubs can and do pass on this tax break to their customers. It won’t be easy — especially for those forward-thinking licensees who decided not to implement their suppliers’ recent inflationary price rises until after the Budget — so they could do it all in one go.
It doesn’t really matter how you do it, as long as you do it noisily. I know some of you stopped dealing in coppers and rounded your prices to 5p increments a long time ago; and the thought of supplementing your float with a bag of pennies is unappealing. But there are other options.
How about knocking 10p off the price of a couple of tactically important beers, rather than a penny off all of them? Maybe try putting a ‘leave a penny, take a penny’ dish on the bar like you sometimes see in petrol stations? Or you could advise your customers that you will donate 1p to charity for every pint they buy? Whatever you choose to do, advertise it prominently.
The monetary aspect of this tax break — the first duty cut since 1959 — was a nice surprise, if not a game-changer. What was much more significant was the Treasury’s apparent Damascene conversion to the benefits of beer and pubs. This momentous shift in its attitude was signalled by this beautiful sentence from George Osborne’s Dispatch Box message: “Responsible drinkers — and our pubs — should not pay the price for the problems caused by others.”
And with that short statement, it became clear that we had won the argument that pubs are the place for supervised, social drinking; and that beer — as a low-ABV long alcoholic drink — is not the cause of society’s problems.
We can learn from the success of the Save Your Pint campaign, which employed the passion and personality of Hobgoblin, the reach of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), the political nous of the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), the insider influence of MPs Andrew Griffiths and Greg Mulholland, and the generous support of other trade bodies and individuals — not least the thousands of licensees who signed the petition and lobbied their MPs.
Our unity was our strength.
While we should remember and repeat this winning formula when we make our next appeal for Government support (a cut in VAT), we must also show our appreciation for the small mercy we have just been granted and show we can be trusted to act in good faith when a concession — however rare — comes our way.